Eight people lost their lives while cycling on Irish roads in 2019, according to a record of Garda press releases as reported by this website.
According to data published on the Garda website — for up to 9am on December 31 — there has been an increase to 148 deaths across all road users, which is six more deaths than the previous year. As well as eight cyclists, the deaths also included 27 pedestrians, 79 drivers, 15 passengers, 17 motorcyclists, and two pillion passengers.
The number of deaths of people cycling is down one compared to the previous year. Comparing this to records of collisions per year in recent decades, it is lower than the 20 year average of 10 deaths, and just under the 10 year average of 9 deaths per year.
Six of the eight fatal collisions which involved the deaths of people cycling last year were in rural areas. The avergae age of those killed was around 44-years-old, ranging from a 9-year-old child to people in their 70s.
Car drivers represented the highest number (3) of other types of road users involved in these collisions where a person cycling died — the rest of the collisions involved a van driver, a truck driver, a truck which was reportedly parked at the time, a tram driver and a collision with no other road user other than the cyclist who died.
The eight collisions with cycling fatalities were:
- March 27: A man in his 60s died in a single-vehicle collision while cycling on the R552 at Colkeragh between Ballylongford and Listowel.
- April 7: A 47-year-old woman was killed, in a collision with a car driver, while she was cycling on the N71 in the townland of Aghills, Skibbereen, Co Cork.
- April 21: 9-year-old Bridget Ward was killed on the R358 Ballinasloe to Ahascragh Road in a collision involving a car driver and her younger brother who was also cycling and who was injured.
- June 2: 45-year-old Mariusz Kryszak, who worked in a nearby hotel, was killed in a collision with a car driver on the Gap of Dunloe.
- October 7: A man in his 70s was killed in a collision with a van driver on the R491 Roscrea to Shinrone Road, Mountheaton, Shinrone, Birr, Co Offaly.
- October 29: A 70-year-old man was killed when he collided with a truck which was reported as being parked at the time in the Shankill area of Paulstown, Co Kilkenny near the border with Co Carlow.
- November 1: 34-year-old Neeraj Jain was killed in a collision with a truck driver on the South Circular Road at its junction of Brookfield Road across from the site where the new National Children’s Hospital is being built.
- December 15: 19-year-old Cormac Ó Braonái was killed in a collision with a tram driver on Peter Place in Dublin 2, which is around the point where trams on the Luas green line come to street level in the city centre just inside the Grand Canal.